THE WEY GALLERY |  Donald Hamilton Fraser RA

Donald was born in London in 1929 and educated at Maidenhead grammar school, Berkshire, after which he trained as a journalist with Kemsley Newspapers. Only after completing his national service in 1949 did he decide to study the painting that had long been a private interest. By the time he left St Martin's School of Art in 1952, he was already attracting notice, and, in 1953, the gallery Gimpel Fils gave him the first of many one-man shows. That year he was awarded a French government scholarship to study for a year in Paris, and it was there, perhaps braced by that refreshing French acceptance of the natural place of the artist in the world, that he was to come into a full confidence in himself as a painter, and to find his true way.

In 1954, in a ceremony at the British embassy in Paris, he married Judith Wentworth-Sheilds, a fellow student from St Martin's. On their return to London, Fraser, helped no doubt by his earlier experience as a journalist, worked for a while for Arts Review – in those days an indispensable guide to the British art world – but was soon able to devote himself entirely to his own work. Then, in 1958, Carel Weight, the then professor, took him on as a tutor in the painting school of the Royal College of Art. He was to remain in the post for the next 25 years, fondly remembered by his students for an unfailing understanding and unprescriptive guidance. In 1975 he was elected an associate and, in 1985, a full member of the College.

he served on innumerable exhibition panels, was for 14 years a member of the Royal Fine Arts Commission, and was a vice-president of the Royal Overseas League from 1986. Always a supporter, he had served on the council of the Artists' General Benevolent Fund since 1981, and was its chairman for several years in the 1980s.

The list of galleries that own or have exhibited his work is phenomenal. Donald participated in many of the most significant exhibitions of British work including the Royal Academy's 25 Years of British Painting.

Donald Hamilton Fraser, who died in September 2009 aged 80, was one of the most successful and well-regarded Modernist painters of the immediate postwar generation, his boldly-handled and richly-coloured semi-abstract landscapes and still-lifes establishing him as a promising exponent of the latest Ecole de Paris style.